The Washington Post’s sports section was a gold standard, all the way to the end

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington Post sports section died Wednesday. Whether you blame natural causes or more avoidable factors, the loss for the D.C. area is immense.

The ramifications were felt almost immediately. Shortly after the newspaper eliminated its sports section while laying off a third of its staff, the hometown NBA team made a massive trade. The Washington Wizards agreed to acquire star Anthony Davis from Dallas. Over two hours after the news broke, there was still no mention of it on the Post’s online sports site.

Washington struggles for respect as a sports town, at times an afterthought compared to passionate Eastern cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. D.C.’s population, so the stereotype goes, is too transient, too consumed with politics to care about the local teams.

For decades, however, the Post treated sports as a vital part of life in the district. Whatever the rest of the country thought about Washington’s teams and fans, there was no better place to read about sports than the nation’s capital.

If you grew up in D.C. as a sports fan in the 1980s, the Post wasn’t necessarily the paper of Woodward and Bernstein. It was the paper of Boswell, Brennan, Feinstein, Wilbon and Kornheiser. More recently, it was the paper of Jenkins, Buckner and Kilgore.

“Growing up reading the Post, I didn’t realize it wasn’t like this in other cities,” ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt said on social media. “I didn’t know how lucky we were to enjoy giants of their craft.”

The Post made Washington sports fans feel like they mattered. If those days are over, they should not be forgotten.

Best of the best

Before they became TV stars on “Pardon The Interruption” at ESPN, Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser were D.C. institutions at the Post. When Joe Gibbs’ 1991 team won its first 11 games on the way to Washington’s third Super Bowl title, Kornheiser’s “Bandwagon” columns — which combined his usual wit and irreverence with a cockiness befitting one of the best seasons in NFL history — became as memorable as the games themselves.

Before her own television career took off, Rachel Nichols chronicled the Capitals’ run to the Stanley Cup Final for the Post in 1998. John Feinstein was a reporter at the paper before and after his book on Bob Knight turned him into a famous author.

Christine Brennan covered football for the Post in the mid-80s. Now with USA Today, Brennan received the Red Smith Award for contributions to sports journalism from the Associated Press Sports Editors in 2020. The following year, Sally Jenkins — who was still at the Post — won it. The Post’s Shirley Povich received that honor back in 1983.

Thomas Boswell, the Post’s go-to columnist for all things baseball, was given the 2025 Career Excellence Award by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He was honored during Hall of Fame weekend last year.

A new era

The Post would never be confused with a tabloid sports section, but the headlines and layout moved into the 21st Century with panache.

Designer Brianna Schroer said she was part of this week’s cuts. Reporter Scott Allen, whose position was eliminated as well, posted a thread on social media of some of the sports section’s best front pages. They are a timeline of D.C. sports from the past 25 years — which included Major League Baseball’s return to Washington and long-awaited championships by the Capitals, Nationals, Mystics and Spirit.

The Post’s reporting on the organizational culture was part of Dan Snyder’s downfall as owner of the football team he renamed the Commanders. And as recently as last year, Candace Buckner (top sports columnist), Adam Kilgore (national beat writing) and Kent Babb (top long feature) were APSE award winners.

The Post balanced stories of national relevance with coverage of local interest. Andrew Beyer — the man behind the famous Beyer Speed Figures — was the paper’s horse racing columnist for nearly four decades.

If you wanted to read about the World Cup, Steven Goff, one of the country’s top soccer writers, was in the pages of the Post. If you wanted to know who had the best high school volleyball team in the area, the Post ranked them — part of extensive preps coverage that included the paper’s much-anticipated All-Met teams.

The future

Wilbon and Kornheiser did not address the Post’s action on Wednesday’s episode of “PTI,” but for those who recently lost jobs, feelings were understandably raw.

“The community loses. That’s real. The Sports page should be a place for conversation and debate without the vitriol from other areas. In Washington, that’s gone,” said columnist Barry Svrluga, who was laid off Wednesday. “Someone will fill the void. I hope it happens quickly.”

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports